The Boy I Loved
by Cradlerobber Speedo-kun
Summary: Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic, was seen as a pompous windbag a lot. He was also well known for tyring to deceive the wizarding world. But he had other reasons than were guessed for his lies, and it turned out that these mattered more... Slash.
1. Quick Note

Quick Note: Please keep in mind that there needs to be a small suspension of belief in reading this, as I have altered the age of Cornelius Fudge so as to work with the story. Thank you, and enjoy the story. Please review, it's nice to get feedback. 


	2. Farewell to He Whom I Knew

A/N: Yay! Another fanfic that I thought up merely on a lark and then actually wrote almost immediately after thinking it up! This one is shorter than the last I did, tho. Anyway, enough about that... Warnings for this story are for slash and for very slight spoilers. Hell, they might not even be spoilers! I just wanna be on the safe side, so I'll call them slight spoilers. Ah, well... By the way, I don't think anyone else has done a story like this so far, and if they have I'd like it if you'd tell me in a review you would leave upon completion of the reading of this story. And regardless of that, please review if you read! I have a policy of if you review one of my stories, I'll read and review one of yours! ^^  
  
One final note: the tenses of this story change quite often, and with no real sign of transition. When I say that, I mean it switches from present to past frequently and has nothing to show the transition. Just letting you know so hopefully you will not become confused.  
  
Good-Bye to the Times  
  
By Cradlerobber Speedo-kun  
  
I am Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic and despised by many. I am seen as a man who didn't want to deal with the truth and made it worse in the end. I am seen as the one who manipulated the Daily Prophet, and therefore much of the wizarding world. I am also viewed as being overly paranoid. There are so many who would wish me dead.  
  
Why did I try to pretend that Lord Voldemort wasn't really back? Is it true I thought Harry Potter was just an attention-seeking, lying adolescent? Is it true that I really just didn't want to think about what would have to be done if Voldemort really was back? Or did I have other reasons for behaving the way I did?  
  
Truly, it was a combination of all of that. I did think that Potter was exaggerating to get attention, it is true that I didn't want to think about what had to be done if Voldemort was back, it is even true that I was also trying to ruin Dumbledore's reputation, but I had another reason too. In some ways, this reason was more important to me than the others. And, in many ways, it was probably the most foolish reason for ignoring the evidence and telling the wizarding world that it was a lie, that Voldemort wasn't truly back.  
  
I had, once upon a time, been in love with Lord Voldemort.  
  
It all started years ago, back when I was a boy at Hogwarts. I was a first year, and he was a third year. Back then he was different. He was Thomas Riddle. Tom Riddle. He wasn't the nicest person ever, but he, for some reason, took me under his wing. It was more common back then for people to do this, and I was glad of it, because I was completely petrified and had made no friends at all. He became a brother of sorts to me. And I liked it that way.  
  
By the time he was a fifth year, he was becoming increasingly hostile to most people, but he was still kindly to me. People didn't understand it at all; I was this unpopular dork that no one wished to talk to, and he was the mysterious boy who hated most people, yet he and I were great friends. I didn't care that other people hated me, his being my friend was enough. And I overlooked the fact that he didn't like many other people besides myself. It didn't matter what he thought of others.  
  
Another year passed, I was in fourth year, he was in his sixth. And I realized something. I had fallen in love with him. Completely, utterly, totally. And, somehow, it made perfect sense. Everyone else at the school hated me. He hated everyone else at the school. So who else would I have fallen for, anyway? No one from the school. And I didn't see anyone over the vacations, either. I was almost completely friendless. And the fact that he would only speak to me, and nigh on no one else made me feel special. I was madly in love, and I didn't care.  
  
But then his final year came. I didn't want him to leave, I was afraid I'd never see him again. On the final night at Hogwarts, I planned to tell him how I felt. And I did tell him. He smiled, and I stood there, feeling completely high strung after admitting something like that, and already I was beginning to calm down. He didn't smile for anyone else. He told me that he cared a lot for me, but didn't exactly feel the same. He saw me as a brother, the one he had never had before he met me. He told me I was his only true family, for his own family was an absolute disgrace to him and most of them didn't like him. He put his hands on my shoulders, and kept on smiling, and told me that he would kiss me, as a good-bye, as a kiss between friends, as a kiss between brothers, and to show he really did care about me.  
  
He kissed me lightly on the lips, and I started to feel pinpricks at the back of my eyes, warnings of tears that were to come. I wasn't sad that he didn't feel the same; I was a mixture of bittersweet emotions, sad because he was done with Hogwarts, happy because he cared, relieved because he didn't hate me, upset that I was about to cry. I grabbed him, and wrapped my arms around his neck, burying my face in his chest. He was quite a bit taller than me. I cried into his shirt, and although at first he had stiffened, he brought his arms up and wrapped them around me, holding me as I cried. He absentmindedly stroked my hair, and kept whispering about how everything was going to be alright. Absolutely alright.  
  
I didn't see him again until the next day, on platform 9 ¾ as I was waiting for one of my parents to show up. Someone had shouted my name, and I turned around to see him standing there. His parents weren't there, they never had been. He always had left without anyone save himself. He walked over, and hugged me tightly. I started to say good-bye, but he said to me, "No. Not good-bye. It's 'I'll see you later.' It'd only be a good-bye if we weren't going to see each other ever again. But we will sometime. And until then, I'll write all the time." To this day I remember his exact words. And who wouldn't? He was the first person I ever loved, maybe even the last...  
  
I used to get letters from him all the time. They were what sustained me all through my final years of Hogwarts. Sure, people talked, but it was all just talk. They didn't know any of the truth. But I used to get letters almost every day. As time passed, and I graduated, they became less frequent, and he said he was getting very busy with work, so I was never annoyed with it. I had just begun working for the Ministry at that point, and I knew what it was like to have a busy work schedule.  
  
Then the first war came. Lord Voldemort suddenley rose from nowhere and decimated wizard populations across the globe. And then, miraculously, he was defeated. By a baby. A small baby by the name of Harry Potter. When the war first began, the first attack was set, I stopped getting letters from Tom. I came to the conclusion that he had been killed. Words could not describe my sorrow.  
  
Years later, I sat in the office of the Minister of Magic. I _was_ the Minister of Magic! And with that newfound power, I requested a full report done on Voldemort. The witch who did it, Cymbeline Plumeberry, was an incredibly competent woman, and she came up with the most in-depth report ever conducted on the one known as Lord Voldemort. I thanked her when she laid it on my desk, and after she was gone I began to look at it. My aim had been to determine who had been killed by Voldemort or his followers, in particular to see if Tom Riddle had been killed among those many lost. Of course, the report was very useful in many other ways, but my selfish purposes had taken a forefront.  
  
I began to read it, and was sipping my tea calmly when I saw on the first page of the report, about halfway down, the real name of Lord Voldemort: Thomas Marvel Riddle. Tom Riddle. Tom. The boy I had loved. I dropped my teacup and the report, the teacup shattering on the floor, the report fluttering onto the surface of my desk. And then I promptly fainted.  
  
I came to hours later when an irritated house elf was admonishing me for having dropped my teacup. I sat up, confused at first, while the elf muttered about incompetence within the Ministry. But soon it came back to me, and I wasn't pleased at all. I went home early and took a sleeping draught, then sent myself straight to bed.  
  
The next day, I tried to forget about it. And ever since I have too. There hasn't been a moment since that I haven't tried to force myself to forget it. But I cannot. And it has severely inhibited my abilities to govern truthfully. I know he's evil, I know he is bent on domination of the world, but at the bottom of my heart he is still Tom. He is still the boy who was my only friend, still the one who regarded me as family, still the one whom I loved.  
  
And that is why I ignored the first signs of his return. I did not want to fight against one whom I had loved so dearly, even if it had been years ago. It didn't matter that he wasn't really Tom anymore; he had been once. My subconscious and my heart made me deceive everyone, including myself. I had other reasons, as I've said before, but these ones took the forefront in my denials. Even now it's hard to admit that I was wrong, that he is back.  
  
And one day he'll be coming to kill me, and I won't move an inch. I'll sit on my chair as he looms over my desk, and I won't even think of moving. And he'll kill me as I sit there, willingly staying in place. Because no matter what, once upon a time he was the boy I loved, and even when that once upon a time ended, my feelings that I'd sacrifice myself for him never did. 


End file.
